2025 was a big year for Community Engagement (CE), with the team setting new benchmarks for high-quality engagement that was meaningful for our community and empowering for Council staff. We set goals to:

• Build on our well-regarded digital engagement with high-quality in-person and grassroots activities
• Make our engagement and outcomes more accessible to the community
• Increase our capability to deliver best-practice engagement supported by CBCity’s newly adopted CE Charter.

On the ground in 2025:

Working with Major Projects, we facilitated simple to understand consultations to support short and medium-term upgrades to improve Belmore and Lakemba town centres. Centring an understanding of community priorities, we wanted participants to tell us what interventions would improve their town centres, and where we should make them. To support this objective, we held a walking workshop through Belmore town centre; in-person pop-ups; and a map-driven digital engagement.

We received over 300 geographic suggestions and considered feedback about priority public domain upgrades across these town centres. Valuable insights from the community have now helped drive design work and the project team will now be delivering targeted upgrades and concepts driven by community input. Throughout, we’ve kept the community updated about their feedback and how it will be used to inform Council’s work, from design to digging.

Community members marked their ideas on maps of Belmore and Lakemba.

As part of the development of the next CBCity Youth Action Plan, the CE team worked closely with the Children and Youth team to help deliver the 2025 Youth Summit (140 students) and a workshop with youth service workers at CommUNITY Connect 2025 (40 participants).

CE staff provided strategic advice and helped design activities to support the Youth Action Plan consultation, as well as direct involvement with presenting, facilitation, and data collection. This years’ work with Community Development shows the team’s increasing value as an internal service provider, offering strategic advice and practical support to achieve engagement objectives.

The Panania Library project aims to deliver a modern, multi-purpose facility and public plaza designed to meet the needs of a growing community. Engagement included visits to local schools in Panania and East Hills to hear children’s ideas about the future of libraries, as well as broader community outreach to discuss this much-loved community space.

As a significant piece of community infrastructure, the project generated high levels of interest. Across a two-stage consultation process, we’ve clearly communicated our plans and how community feedback could be considered and incorporated.

Careful stakeholder management with local Rotary market organisers, exterior facility users, as well as regular library patrons highlights the value of connecting community consultation with operational considerations, helping to build long-term relationships that benefit both Council and the community.

Thomas St Reserve is a vital community recreation space in Revesby Heights identified by Council for revitalisation. Battling perceptions of neglect in a highly engaged local community, Council’s pop-up was heavily attended by local residents. The CE team used strong communication skills to have robust conversations and make sure the community was heard, represent Council’s strong desire to improve the reserve, and ensure it was understood that community feedback would be taken on board constructively.

Subsequently, Community feedback was placed at the centre of the project, heavily influencing the designs and ensuring local perspectives directly informed outcomes.

The work on this consultation showed the value of being present in the community, understanding localised concerns and aspirations, and working collaboratively on solutions. By taking this approach, Council was able to establish trust with local residents and achieve positive outcomes influenced by direct community involvement.

Following the discovery of asbestos at Richard Podmore Reserve, Council was required to find a solution to the loss of a much-used dog off-leash area. With Council electing to remediate the contaminated reserve to a passive park, the decision was made to relocate the dog-off leash area to nearby Wise reserve.

With NSW Ombudsman involvement and widespread community concerns, the CE team worked with Asset Planning and the Communications team to develop messaging and objectives in a multi-pronged approach to communicate Council’s position. Working together, multiple Council units were able to manage the overall response to a delicate safety issue and ensure the community were informed and heard.

One of City Improvement’s key responsibilities is understanding how our community feels about local parks and how well we are maintaining and enhancing them. The challenge? Our LGA is home to more than 150 smaller passive parks!

In a Council first, CE partnered closely with the team to deliver a tailored digital solution, providing an LGA-wide survey through our online platform. Using an interactive map, participants could easily locate parks within their ward and provide targeted feedback on the spaces that mattered most to them.

With more than 380 community responses delivering valuable insights, Council now has a strong foundation to guide future surveying and ongoing improvements to our passive parks. The project also led to CE reviewing the list of passive parks, prompting an update to our asset list that will be useful for several departments in Council. The project was made possible through collaboration between CE, City Improvement, Communications and the Open Space team.

The Community Engagement (CE) team led the delivery of a targeted civic education session for a group of CALD students from Navitas as part of their Australian citizenship test preparation. The students were newly arrived migrants who had recently settled in the Canterbury-Bankstown area and wanted to better understand the role of Council and how they could actively engage with it. To ensure the experience was practical and meaningful, CE coordinated the session to be held in the Council Chambers, providing participants with an authentic insight into how local government operates. The session included a presentation from Customer Service staff outlining Council’s functions and services, while the CE team facilitated a workshop on civic participation, explaining the role of community members as citizens of CBCity and Australia, their rights and responsibilities, and the various ways they can participate in local decision-making and community life.

The CE team provided strategic and hands-on support to the Community & Cultural Services team as part of the Racism Not Welcome initiative, joining their event at the Bankstown Arts Centre. This included designing and facilitating a creative, arts-based activity that enabled residents to express their thoughts, feelings, and lived experiences of racism through art. The activity created a safe and inclusive space for participants to have their say, not only about how they would like the City to look in the future, but also about how they would like people within the City to interact with one another. Through this engagement, the CE team supported meaningful conversations about inclusion, respect, and community values; providing valuable insights from the community to inform Council’s ongoing Racism Not Welcome initiative and reinforcing a shared aspiration for a city that is welcoming, connected, and free from racism.

Community Engagement supported a significant pipeline of Council work in 2025 with over 60 projects.